On the Marknosis list, there has recently been a bit of discussion regarding personality types and induction styles.

One person posted that he read somewhere that someone was in a hypnosis class in China where they did not teach the Elman induction because they claimed it was not appropriate for Chinese people. Hmm.

I wish he could reference where he read that. I live in Taiwan (Republic of China, the “other” China) and my wife is from Hong Kong and I honeymooned in China . . . most of the folks I do hypnosis with are Chinese people and I use Elman all the time – it’s my mainstay approach for a first induction with most folks. If I am not using the Elman then I’m using an instant or rapid induction. I use a modified group variation of the Elman for my performance or demonstrational hypnosis presentations and have found that most folks respond well to it as well (most of the folks for such demonstrations in this neck of the woods are Chinese).

I have taught the Elman and similar rapid and instant inductions to a number of Chinese, many of whom are “certified trainers” with this or that organization but their organizational curriculum doesn’t really cover the Elman (a few folks have noted that the demonstration, if any, of the Elman in the trainings they had previously attended lasted a good solid twenty minutes and that some of their instructors said that it often does not work as well as progressive relaxation so they obviously didn’t have strong instruction – if your straight run of the Elman takes twenty minutes then it is no longer an Elman induction, it’s a different monkey, one that has been stripped of its power as a strong point of the Elman is that it must be done in less than four minutes – Elman used to berate his students if they couldn’t get it down to three or three and a half – as the speed helps increase depth as it doesn’t allow the critical factor to kick in . . . your analytical type responded better to the instant as she was thinking to much even for the standard Elman). Most folks who come to my workshops are blown away by how fast I run inductions or processes from waking state to deep somnambulism . . . a reflection on the state of training rather than on personal competence. Most of the folks who I have exposed to the Elman who are trainers then turn right around and add it to their courses and run it right.

I’ve not come across anyone claiming that the Elman isn’t appropriate for Chinese people although I have come across folks who don’t teach the Elman either because they are ignorant of it or other rapid or instant methods, they don’t have confidence in rapid or instant effects, or they have a prejudice towards the progressive relaxation style they were taught back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. This training prejudice is not unique to Chinese though, I’ve found plenty of non-Chinese who have funny ideas about trance as well. While the Elman is a solid induction that works well with the majority of folks, there are folks who are complete crap at teaching it and others who are very prejudiced against it or prejudiced in favor of something else who teach that prejudice in their own classes and students tend to pick up the prejudices of their trainers (which is why I strongly believe in cross-training from different organizations that have differing training prejudices and in training with multiple instructors – even then same level of material – in order to see how even the same methods can be applied differently by folks with different temperments or to find new insights or techniques that would not be available to one without exposure to multiple instructors. For instance, while Elman’s approach was solid, so was Erickson’s for certain folks or Spiegel’s for others. Someone learning from Elman alone would have solid tools just as someone learning from Erickson came out of it with solid tools as did Spiegel’s students . . . however, they would be different tools . . . someone who learned from any two of these three would or ideally all three would have many more tools and much more skill and ability available to them than the mere sum of the three parts. Anyone who would say the Elman is inappropriate for Chinese people hasn’t learned the Elman, not the real Elman, or seen it in action by someone who knows how to use it. Such a person would be robbing themselves of a valuable potential tool.

I do recall a member of the Marknosis list once asking about things here as he was taking a course in Hong Kong where the program was not teaching the Elman but only the progressive relaxation induction but it wasn’t because they felt the Elman was not appropriate for Chinese people but that they seemed to think the PR was the cat’s pajamas and didn’t think much of the Elman (which makes me doubt their competence as hypnotists and certainly as trainers). I believe the young man who posted that query did go to one of Mark’s Bangkok courses.

The querant noted that he has had a grand total of two Chinese clients and both of them had difficulty responding to the Elman. He then wondered if this supports the Elman-isn’t-appropriate-for-Chinese supposition. I would say NO, it does not. It’s two people, two people are not all Chinese. As you have obviously seen, two instances do not a trend make. My experience with Chinese folks have been that most respond well to the Elman and that with some I have to do something else to push ’em along. I’ve done walkabout trance stuff with one of my workshops where we did instants and waking trance effects with no bother (see the videos here, in the video section). BTW, were the two examples of “Chinese” that you have encountered ethnically Chinese and cultural Western or both ethnically and cultural Chinese? There is a difference and that reads to what sort of generalizations are being made. Most folks I work with are ethnically Chinese and culturally Chinese while I have worked with two people who are ethnically Chinese and culturally American . . . most of the former respond well to the Elman and similar inductions while one of the latter was completely unresponsive but I would be very reluctant to make a generalization that Americans of Chinese descent don’t respond well to the Elman as I know I’ve just not had that much exposure to those kind of clients (albeit, the vast majority of the Americans and others who are non-Chinese that I have worked with respond well to an Elman approach).

BTW, if you are in Taipei and are Chinese . . . or not Chinese . . . and would like to learn more about how you can set up a hypnosis session for yourself, feel free to check my webpages for more information and contact me for an appointment for recreational, entertainment, or therapeutic hypnosis.

All the best,
Brian

Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH [phillips@nccu.edu.tw] Certified Hypnotherapist
Associate Professor, NCCU, Taipei, Taiwan
http://www.briandavidphillips.com